Dreams Of Madness : The True Misery Of The House Of Bernarda Alba

Poverty and hardship are shown to create vulnerability in female characters, particularly the female servants, allowing powerful men to manipulate and sexually abuse them. Kent illustrates how poverty perpetuates maltreatment and abuse in a society like Burial Rites using the characters of Agnes’ mother Ingveldur and Agnes. Agnes’ mother is forced to make invidious choices as her children are “lugged along” from farm to farm, where she is sexually exploited by her employers. In spite of these circumstances, Agnes’ mother is commonly referred to as a whore in their society which abhors female promiscuity yet disregards male promiscuity as a harmless character trait; as in the case of Natan, who is merely “indiscreet” despite all his philandering. Born into poverty, Agnes experiences similar sexual coercion and manipulation from her “masters” and yet is labelled “a woman who is loose with her emotions and looser with her morals”. The severe poverty of Agnes is explicitly demonstrated to the reader by Kent through the intertextual reference of her entire belongings - a very dismal, piteous list to be “sold if a decent offer is presented”. Furthermore, Kent contrasts the situation of Agnes, a “landless workmaid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty”, to the comparative security Steina has experienced using a rhetorical question from

The first right, that of sleeping alone and owning her nights, describes an internal conflict which Grandmother carried. While she truly loved her family, she yearned for space and freedom. She wanted to control at least some part of her life, but

Having concluded that both females are in complete possession of their mental capacities at the beginning of the stories, a collation of The Awakening and “The Yellow Wall-Paper” uncovers a similarity in the oppressiveness of the ruling male figures. Both husbands in

“Undressing Aunt Frieda,” is a poem about the narrator’s remembrance of his Aunts life while visiting her on a death bed. The narrative is in first person, and takes place as the narrator and his daughter are about to leave the relative. The first half of the poem explores Frieda and her past. The second half is about how the narrator and daughter have grown and learned from the aunt. While undressing her aunt, the narrator feels emotions and remembers his past with Frieda. The poem describes these emotions and memories in a metaphor explaining unique characteristics of how Aunt Frieda undressed, and how she impacted the relatives.

In “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin, the informally-speaking narrator depicts a cookie-cutter utopia with perpetually happy citizens that sing and dance in the music-filled streets during the Festival of Summer. However, under one of the beautiful public buildings lays a child, no older than ten years-old, who lays in its own excrement. Although the citizens know the emancipated child is there, they refuse to act upon the child’s suffering, for their happiness depends entirely on the child’s abominable misery. Through ethos, the narrator illustrates this utopian society with a casual tone and frequently asks the audience for their input. Le Guin’s fairy-tale introduction of the story establishes her credibility through her extensive knowledge and understanding of the people of Omelas. Le Guin utilizes logos through the narrator’s second person point of view which incites the audience to draw their own conclusions about the city of Omelas and question their own justifications of the child’s existence. The concept of the happiness of many relying on the necessary suffering of one forces the reader to question their own morals and their justifications for the child’s physical and mental condition. Through ethos, logos, and pathos, Le Guin presents the contrast and divide between the citizens of Omelas and the child in the cellar in order to challenge the reader’s capacity for moral self-conception.

In the memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, describes her memories growing up with her family. The Walls family is a complex family where the intentions of the parents is not fully comprehensible. For instance, it is difficult to make judgement of the parents as solely bad people. Walls’s parents are faulty in their decisions, but it can be refuted that the parents had good intentions based on what they believed in to be true. The parents were educated, but they refused to follow the rules of common knowledge and perception s of society.

The narrator is given a sense of oppression from the beginning of the story by keeping a hidden diary from her husband as “a relief to her mind.” Throughout the story her true thoughts are hidden from the readers and her husband, which gives the story a symbolic perspective.

“The Semplica-Girl Diaries” is a short story in which George Saunders, the author, presents unique ideas of the way people live their life and what each person does to be able to live. The dad, Saunders’ main character, writes in a diary and explains to the readers what he experiences almost every day with his family. He wants to be there for his family and provide for them the best that he can, but it is difficult when he has young children who have desires as any children do. The dad mentions status throughout the short story, and the children are aware that they do not have money like some other people who are around them. Not everyone in the world has the best job and life, because it is not always up to people to make the choices that need to be made for their family.

Family is one of the most important institutions in society. Family influences different aspects of a person’s life, such as their religion, values, morals and behavior. Unfortunately, problems may arise when an individual’s belief system or behavior does not coincide with that of family standards. Consequently, individuals may be forced to repress their emotions or avoid acting in ways that that are not acceptable to the family. In the novel The Rain God, written by Arturo Islas, we are presented with a story about a matriarchal family that deals with various conflicts. One major internal conflict is repression. Throughout the novel the characters act in strange ways and many of the family members have internal “monsters” that represent

Freedom. A goal. A liberty. A myth. So many descriptions for a single concept. Yet the main idea is the same: to be free of restrictions, free to be whatever you wish. It is a life necessity, one that was, unfortunately, and still is, restricted throughout history, resulting in many chasing after its acquisition. Humans currently live in a time, in several nations, where freedom is a right, a necessity of life freely given. However, throughout history, freedom has been kept to only a minority, resulting in individuals struggling to change society for freedom to be distributed to the majority of people, a battle that took years, centuries to accomplish. This fight for true autonomy took many forms, both violent and peaceful. Literary works, in particular, have been major agents to this cause, serving as both reminders of those struggles and remembrance to readers of the endeavors those authors sought to accomplish. Two particular works, The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, spearheaded movements for freedom by tackling the prejudice of gender roles, expressing through their novels’ characters and experiences the arguments for individual freedom and the challenges that must be conquered to achieve those goals for future generations.

In the words of Sigmund Freud, “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” The legendary psychologist saw dreams as an avenue to study one’s underlying motives for action. Similarly, in literature one finds striking significance from the illusions of protagonists that often predict the nature of one’s psyche. Two such examples present themselves in Blanche, from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and the grandmother, from Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. The former tale follows a lady without a home who finds herself reliant on her belligerent and bestial brother-in-law. The latter traces a family’s road trip South and their encounter with a wanted fugitive. Both Blanche and the grandmother find themselves tethered to their idealistic and often times hypocritical fantasies which signify their underlying mental instability and foreshadow their eventual ruinations. Williams and O’Connor examine their protagonists’ delusions through gender, clothing, and nostalgia.

In both “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a captivity narrative by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Lottery”, a short story by Shirley Jackson, tradition incites conflict. These works of fiction reflect upon the use of a tradition as a divisive force between the characters, and the societal setting. In both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Lottery”, tradition is the main source of conflict in families, as well as the main characters and their societies. These stories display the devastating consequences of society’s reluctance to change.

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

It is a turning point for both women, but it affects Felicite deeply because she has lost so much and continues to lose those that are important to her. At this point in the story, she has lost her parents, her sisters (through loss of contact), the love of her life, her nephew whom she had grown very fond of, and now Virginie. Most people would have given up at this point, but once again, Felicité shows her devotion in a different way. When Mme Aubain grows depressed, Felicité is the one to remind her that she has another child to live for, and also in “remembrance of her” (Flaubert 533). Mme Aubain wakes as if from a dream and agrees, “Ah yes!...

Not only can she not have Pepe, but she can't have any man. She must stay in mourning and take care of her mother until she dies. Bernarda is a nasty, mean, unsympathetic lady, and having to spend all your time loced up with her for the rest of her life is about as bad a punishment as I can think of. The meetings with Pepe continue until inevitably, things start to get out of hand. The sisters tell Bernarda that Pepe has been coming and staying late at night, and Angustias insists that it's not with her. One night, Bernarda catches Adela with straw on her skirt and realizes that she has been out with him. Bernarda goes out and shoots at Pepe. She shoots at him, but as Bernarda says herself, "It was my fault. A woman can't aim." Adela believes that Pepe has been shot and kills herself. All things considered, I can't blame her at all, in fact, I very well may have done the same. The only other woman in the town to have an affair, Paca la Roseta, came back with, "her hair loose and a wreath of flowers on her head." She was killed, as was her child as she had become impregnated. Adela was in alomst the exact same boat, as we find out that she too was pregnant, however with Pepe's child, and her punishment would be similar to that of Paca's. However, I believe that she wasn't afraid somuch of being publically chastized, but by knowing that she would never be able to have a life with Pepe, the man she loved with all of her heart.